


devotee

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, First Time, Fluff, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) POV, Krolia (Voltron) POV, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Keith (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-24 04:46:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14947848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: A series of post S6 one-shot requests, out of order.5. keith sees shiro three times in the abyss“He's got your hair,” Shiro whispers.Keith watches himself resettle the child nervously, like he still isn’t sure how to hold it. He watches himself smile. “Hey, don’t blame me for all that,” he hears himself say. “I’ve seen what you look like in the morning.”





	1. krolia comes to a realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Krolia comes to a realization.
>
>> “I’m glad you had friends.”
>> 
>> Keith looks down and smiles and there’s red over his high cheekbones, a little dusting of it that’s so rare and so telling. “A friend,” he says to himself.

“Shiro and I went camping, once,” Keith says quietly.

He’s always quiet. He was when he was born. _Good natured_ , they’d said, so full of hope and all good things because he was healthy and strong. Krolia has regretted leaving him every day since. More, now. More, because he was alone. It’s a dual pain: a love lost and her child adrift. The revelation tore something out of her that’s taken months to heal over to a bearable pain. It’s getting there.

Keith pushes at a log with the long stick he was using to tease the wolf earlier. He’s smiling with that soft-eyed look he gets. He was a beautiful child; he’s more beautiful now. She pictured it a thousand nights, trying to shape the way his jaw would grow and who he would take after more, and it was like trying to imagine color sightless. “He tried to teach me how to make a fire. But he sucked at it,” Keith laughs to himself. “He set his jacket on fire.”

Krolia finds a smile tugging at her mouth.

“I’m glad you had friends.”

Keith looks down and smiles and there’s red over his high cheekbones, a little dusting of it that’s so rare and so telling.

“A friend,” he says to himself.

 

* * *

 

He talks about the team, sometimes. There’s a parting there, some division she can’t suss out and doesn’t know how to come to terms with. He talks about his father once, in the dark, voice tight and rough until Krolia has to stand and walk to the opening of the cave and breathe and breathe and try to hold grief at bay.

Shiro, he talks about all the time. Sometimes it feels like there’s a third person there with them, this disembodied presence that Keith is carrying around with him. Shiro would love their strange little life there and Shiro would love Keith’s wolf because he loves animals and Shiro would love the way the light glitters on the rocks at night because he loved the desert and all its stars.

“He sounds incredible,” Krolia says once, only teasing a little because he does, but there’s one more thing it sounds Shiro would love here and Keith is blind to it.

Keith smiles and kicks the shell he and the wolf are using as a makeshift ball. The wolf stares at it as it rolls by but doesn’t move; Keith is used to it by now and chases after it. He gets more exercise than anyone there with their games of fetch. “Yeah. He’s—the best. He’s like…” Keith bends and grabs the shell, turning it over in his hands. “He’s like…” Keith frowns, that little spot between his brows wrinkling. “He’s like a brother to me.”

Krolia lets it pass without comment. He’s young and he’s stronger than she can imagine for how long he’s been alone. He’s better. Loneliness has a way of carving out people, but he’s so full of so much that’s good. It takes her breath away sometimes and she’s beginning to understand the how of it.

“You love him.”

She cocks her head and tries not to be obvious about the way her eyes are glued to his face. He wears his heart where anyone can see it, this quiet, sweet thing she’s only now learning, and she can’t miss a twitch of his lips or lilt of his voice now. She’s become selfish for this one thing; she wants to hoard any part of him he lets show.

So she sees the flicker of his eyes as he smiles and and tosses the shell away and says, “Yeah. Of course.”

 

* * *

 

“How did you meet him?” she ventures one day, when curiosity gets the better of her. He’s been on a tangent lately—if he opens his mouth, Shiro is on his tongue in seconds—and she never gets tired of hearing him talk but she can’t figure this one out yet.

Keith clams up immediately, but she waits and hopes.

“He came to my high school when I was sixteen,” he says finally. Sixteen. He’s so young. “It was some Garrison thing—” he closes his eyes, hair falling across his forehead, “—and I ditched. He caught me with Dad’s bike later. I thought he was going to yell at me for ditching, but he just wanted to see the bike.” He huffs a little laugh. “I thought he was lame. But he kept coming back.”

She’s holding her breath, she realizes.

“I don’t know why. I don’t know why he cared. I wasn’t—”

He stops talking, cold. His voice cuts out like a flame. His face is in shadow; she can’t see his eyes. He doesn’t move or breathe for a moment, and then he rises like he can’t move fast enough and drags a wrist across his eyes. “Sorry,” he rasps and walks out.

It happens so fast she doesn’t have time to say his name. It’s the first time she’s seen him cry since she could hold him in one hand and it makes her blood run cold. She replays the conversation and tries to find the break and then realizes she’s sitting there while her child cries and follows him out. The why doesn’t matter.

She finds him a few yards away, knees up, face pressed against them where he’s sitting in the dirt. It feels like too little, but she sits beside him and mimics the pose.

Whatever he thinks he wasn’t, whatever he thinks he’s _not_ , he’s wrong. And even through the sympathetic pain twisting through her, she’s sure: this Shiro knew that, too.

 

* * *

 

Time passes too quickly. Keith marks time in clever ways, but Krolia marks it by the way his shoulders start to widen and fill out and the length of his hair.

He tries to cut it himself with the knife the first time it needs it and that explains a lot. Krolia pries it out of his hands and does her best with it, but the end result is about the same. Keith catches his reflection in the blade afterward, turning it back and forth to judge, lips twitching and then he opens his mouth and laughs.

They both do. It’s the sweetest thing she’s ever heard—and there it is, finally: some ghost of his father coming out. Of course, that’s what he would inherit. His mother’s child in all things but that.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” she says when she can catch her breath and god it’s been so long since she laughed.

“It looks exactly like yours,” Keith replies, voice cracking in joy and sets them both off again.

She’s lucky, she realizes. She’s lucky to have this boy and to have this time and there are so many times she told herself it would never come. He’s grown to something incredible and she didn’t have a hand in it, but she’s still proud. The realization of how long he’s been alone is an ever-present wound behind her ribs, but it gets easier the longer they’re together. She gets better at picking his moods and saying the right thing.

That evening he tugs at his bangs across the fire and asks, “Do you think they know we’re gone?”

She pauses where she’s trying to use his knife— _her_ knife—to pare what passes as meat in this strange place. It’s not the first time he’s asked, something like nervousness hovering around his shoulders, something like sorrow on his brow. He’s a child full of worry. “Time passes differently here,” she tries to soothe. “Your friends will be there for you when you get back.”

Keith gives a tight nod.

This is one of those moments she’s been looking for—times when she should say something more, times when Keith needs something and doesn’t know how to ask for it.

“Do you miss them?” she asks, and feels like a fool as soon as it leaves her lips. Of course he does.

But when Keith opens his mouth to answer, he pauses. The firelight echoes in his eyes. “Sort of.”

His voice is rough—another piece of his father he was born to or picked up on the way—and it’s distinct. There’s only one topic he talks about regularly enough to have a voice for.

“You miss him,” she says. Not a question. Not this time.

Keith looks up at her, frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s getting better at thinking before he speaks.

“Yeah. I do.”

She heard down the ranks when Ulaz went rogue and freed the Champion. She knows what the Empire grabbed off Kerberos because every bit of news from that system was like gold to her and she was mad for it, for any hint of what she’d left behind. Now she tries to put it together: the pilot, the Champion, and this man her son is devoted to, utterly.

That night when he’s curled next to the wolf, silent in sleep, she kneels beside him and lays a hand on his hair and goes through the list she’s been making of ways she can protect him when they get back. There are so few and fewer that he’ll appreciate—and nothing she can do to protect him from this.

There’s nothing that can protect him from love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/174933109200/short-fic-prompt-krolias-thoughts-about-this)] [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1008045571859333120)]
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and feel free to come request on tumblr!


	2. a first time, after everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2\. a first time, after everything (nsfw)
>
>> Even months after getting his body back, he's not always sure how to use it. They're doing the best they can with what they have and what they have is time and care and this low, constant burn.

“Is this okay?” he asks for the dozenth time. He can barely moderate his own voice anymore.

Keith is wet and ready in his lap—too wet, Shiro thinks, pressing his fingers in deeper. He didn't need so much preparation, but Shiro is nervous and even months after getting his body back, he's not always sure how to use it. They're doing the best they can with what they have and what they have is time and care and this low, constant burn.

The body in his arms is everything. Keith doesn't answer, but he resettles his arms around Shiro’s shoulders, one hand tightening on the back of his neck. The motion makes Shiro’s stomach writhe in heat. He noses against Keith's neck, kissing what he can reach. “Keith.”

“Yeah,” Keith says softly, drawing an unsteady breath. He pushes down on Shiro's fingers to make his point and draws a little groan out of himself.

Shiro is torn between how much he wants this and how scared he is he'll mess it up. They've made it this far, though and it’s a far cry from death. The backwater planet they found has a few bare outposts and it's not much, but the room is dark and quiet and private. That's all they need now. This has been months in coming.

Slow, he tells himself as he lines up and starts to press inside. Keith widens his straddle and pulls one hand down and clasps his fingers over Shiro's, helping because one hand is a hard thing to get used to. The brush of his long fingers against Shiro is a little shock, but all touch is, there more than anywhere else. He's starved for it some days and others Keith settles a hand on his shoulder and it's enough.

Keith is tight. Slow, he tells himself again, shaking, but Keith has other plans. He pulls his hand back up, buries it in Shiro's hair, and then pushes down in a long, deliberate slide. It works a soft sound out of Shiro, one he doesn't mean to make, and he should have remembered that Keith is never passive—not where Shiro is concerned.

He can't get over it sometimes. The scar over Keith’s cheek and jaw isn’t new anymore, but it isn't old. He came out of the fight a wreck. _Shiro_ wrecked him. They've had time to heal through that, but he never takes it for granted

Keith pauses, letting them both get used to it, and then rises and settles again, sighing Shiro’s name against his hair. Shiro forces himself to stay still, not wanting to push it. Keith’s limbs are tense, but when he pulls back, his eyes are bright. The little lamp by the bed makes him glow. They haven't cut his hair yet; the way it falls over his face is precious and if Shiro had another hand he would push it back or run his fingers through it or tug. He settles on a kiss instead.

It's smoldering. Keith's hip flexes under his hand as he starts moving, hands grasping Shiro’s face and tilting it how he wants.

 _Slower, please_ , Shiro wants to tell him. Make this last. He doesn't have the control he wants, but maybe that's good here. The rhythm and sound is something to focus on, keeping the feeling just the right side of overwhelming as it starts to build and he meets Keith’s little movements. It's how he wanted it. Something slow and quiet, something for the two of them, after everything.

Pleasure rises and flows like a little tide. Keith gets a steady cadence of sounds going and it's all Shiro can do to hold on to him when every move has him shaking.

He's too lost in it to pick out the moment it shifts.

Keith kisses him, too hard and fast for Shiro to return properly and then pulls back far enough to bury his face in Shiro's neck. His rise and fall starts to deepen to a slow roll that makes Shiro's grip tense hard over Keith's hip.

He means to say Keith's name, but it comes out cracked. Keith noses into the hollow of his neck, biting a kiss there with a sound Shiro doesn't recognize. The body under his hand is hot, Shiro realizes; hotter than it should be naked in a cool room on a cool night, even for this. There’s a writhing motion to his hips and hands that’s far past usual, though they’ve never gone so far before.

Keith shudders and stops and repositions closer, legs wider, hands sliding down Shiro’s back and up. His nails need cutting, Shiro thinks, bowing his face to Keith's hair as Keith starts moving again. It's different, suddenly. The sounds Keith's making are strange; even past the rush of blood in his ears, he notices. They're almost pained.

“Keith—Keith, wait.” Shiro has to think to form the words, breathless and hazed with want. Keith slows but doesn't stop and his face is still hidden. When Shiro tries to pull back, Keith digs his nails in keeps him clutched so tight it's almost painful. “Are you okay?”

It's his softest voice, but loud enough to get through. He needs an answer. Every muscle in his body wants to keep going, but they have time now. There will be other rooms on other planets if Keith isn't ready for this. He’s wet between them, but that’s not enough proof. “Keith.”

With exaggerated slowness, Keith pulls back enough to raise his head and look up at him, and—he doesn't look human anymore.

There's shame in his cat-slit eyes and when he opens his mouth to apologize with a wrecked, “Sorry,” his fangs are oversized and too-sharp. In the dark, Shiro can almost imagine his skin is hued darker, too. “Sorry,” he repeats on the edge of frantic. “I don't know—”

Shiro surges forward and kisses him. He abandons his grip on Keith's hip to bury his hand in Keith's hair the way he wanted to and makes it count. Keith freezes and then meets it with something rabid.

He starts moving again, back arched so Shiro can feel all of him pressed tight from hip to shoulder. He’s close.  

The bite of fangs on his lip, the scrape of what he realizes are claws against his back—it's something he remembers from the fight. Not his memories in full, but they came with the body. They're messy and disjointed but the most vibrant ones, the hardest ones, are of the way Keith’s eyes changed in anger. That's not what this is, though. This is for him and for joy and Keith is still fighting it.

Shiro pulls back and says against his cheek, “It's okay to let go. I've got you.” He edges them back into a rhythm, deep and hard.

Keith makes an inhuman sound and shudders again, his entire body tensing as he comes apart. His teeth fasten on the muscle at the juncture of Shiro’s neck and shoulder, almost hard enough to draw blood and maybe it's just that it's Keith. Maybe that's why it's enough to push Shiro over the edge.

He can't speak for a moment. He splays his hand over Keith's spine, feeling his ribs heave as he starts to loosen up. The room comes back to him in pieces: the scratchy sheets, the way the window wouldn't shut right and the ghost of a breeze coming in through the crack, cooling the sweat on them both. It smells like rain outside.

“Are you okay?” Keith asks. His voice has gotten rougher, the older he gets. It’s like sandpaper now. The yellow is starting to fade out of his eyes and there’s still a while quality to him, but it's the kind of thing he could convince himself is a trick of the light. The scar still stands out red, though.

Shiro wants to know what about this would make it seem like he wasn't okay, but he knows Keith so he pulls the hair off his sweat-damp forehead to place a kiss there. There's nothing Keith could do to hurt him—nothing but be unhappy. He tries to weigh an answer that will get across what it needs to, but he's blissed out and the only thing that comes to mind is, “I love you.”

Keith's eyes get wide and then crinkle as he huffs out a laugh. “I love you,” he says. It's not like the first time he said it. There's nothing anguished or desperate. It's fond and familiar and light. He likes saying it. Shiro's the one between them that has to take time mustering it—not because it's not true, but because it always feels like a concession.

Keith has done so much, and Shiro has only that: _I love you_ is his offering at the altar of a dozen little sacrifices made in his name. But it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[on tumblr]()]


	3. shiro tries to give it back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3\. shiro tries to give it back
>
>> “He needs rest,” Krolia says gently. “He's strong.”
>> 
>> Shiro let's his hand settle, pressing enough to convince himself there's no swelling below Keith's ribs, no internal bleeding. The skin there is smooth, intact—there's nothing wrong that time won’t fix, but he can't stop touching.  
> 

When he wakes up, he remembers. He gets one moment while his thoughts coalesce and then he recognizes the face above him and the one thing every memory agrees on is: he's safe. It's all the permission his body needs to shut down.

When he wakes up the second time, it's dark. The purple glow of the enclosed space sends his heart rate soaring for the moment it takes to recognize the cockpit of the Lion and then it all hits in a series of little realizations.

Keith is lying beside him, still in sleep. His breathing is labored—not dangerously so, but he's in pain.

“Keith?” The loudness of his own voice surprises him in the quiet. Krolia is lying across from them on the other side of the pilot’s seat. Her head raises fractionally.

“I think he's hurt,” Shiro explains.

They don't know, he realizes. They have no idea what it took for Keith to pull him back from the brink and it took everything. He skates his hand over Keith's side and that's a shock, too. It feels good to touch. The heat under his hand is so new, but it ticks something in his mind, half forgotten because it’s been so long. It's the heat of a bruise.

“He needs rest,” Krolia says gently. “He's strong.”

Shiro let's his hand settle, pressing enough to convince himself there's no swelling below Keith's ribs, no internal bleeding. The skin there is smooth, intact—there's nothing wrong that time won’t fix, but he can't stop touching.

“I know.”

He is strong. He’s stronger than Shiro imagined. Strong enough to fight him and Haggar and win. Strong enough to fight gravity with Shiro hanging as dead weight, held up by a knife and his own determination. Strong enough to fall and strong enough to save them both anyway.

Krolia rolls and lies back down, giving him his moment of privacy. He half-registers it, hand wiping the hair back from Keith’s temple. Evidently, Keith didn’t have time for a bath before they evacuated; he’s still dirt smudged and bloodied and the scar on his cheek is violent.

The sudden vision of it rushes back to him, tinged in red from the light of his own blade, the smell of searing flesh and then the imagined vision of what it would have been like if Keith’s grip had slipped and Shiro had won that easy.

He's still weak, still tired. Sleep pulls him under against his will, his hand still resting on Keith, violence playing behind his eyes.

 

* * *

 

All is not well.

In the morning, Keith wakes up late and slow. The broken planet they’ve made makeshift camp on while trying to contact Matt and the rebels is hot in the sun, but Shiro doesn’t mind it. Sun is a blessing after months without. He lets it warm his skin and steal the worst of his thoughts—and there are so many.

Keith stays in the shade against the Black Lion, armor stripped off, napping in and out. His clothes don’t fit anymore and Shiro is torn between low concern and the way his shirt rides up his hips and stretches across his chest. There are bruises on the strip of skin exposed there. Shiro traces it with his eyes, letting himself look without shame. Keith’s eyes are unfocused and half-lidded and and if he sees… If he sees, it’s fine. Shiro doesn’t have anything left to hide.

“How are you feeling?” Keith asks when he notices Shiro's attention. His voice is a scrape.

Shiro weighs it and tries to think of a way to describe what he is. He’s hollowed out and over-full. There’s too much in his body now where there was nothing for so long and everything beyond it is overwhelming. Keith isn’t, somehow. Maybe those months of piloting together, of feeling Keith right there next to him even in spirit, even when he was beyond touch, were enough.

“I’m getting there,” Shiro says.

Keith smiles and closes his eyes again. There are lines and dark marks below them. He’s not well, but there’s nothing they can do about it right now. He needs rest more than anything. He needs time.

The others seem content to leave them be for the moment. This is Hunk and Pidge's perview, with the rest of the group looking on and trying to at least look helpful. Shiro watches them with half his attention. There's no breeze, but the heat is dry and the low sun reminds him another thing he half remembers from a perspective that doesn't seem real—the rush of thin atmosphere, the light washing over them, catching in Keith's eyes as pure determination.

Shiro sets his hand on Keith's, to touch and nothing else, but Keith doesn't twitch. He's dead to the world. It hurts in a way he almost forgot, like melancholy, like need, to see Keith at the edge. It hurts to remember he's the one that sent him there.

“Keith...”

He catches himself. Rest. He needs rest. They both do. There's nothing else they're good for right now. He drags himself closer and falls asleep with Keith's head on his shoulder and the ghost of his breath over Shiro's neck and feels alive, at last.

 

* * *

 

“I'm fine to pilot,” Keith says again. He's not. He can barely keep his head up.

Pidge and Hunk get the comms working. It’s only enough to send a message and receive one in return on a four hour delay, but they have their coordinates. Without a wormhole, the journey will take days at a minimum. With limited water and food, for the first time a true kind of desperation is settling into them. No one’s had time to consider the implications of leaving the Emperor in a quintessence field, but by unspoken agreement they choose the path least occupied by Galra troops and hostile entities.

Almost all of them are.

They can’t waste time waiting on this rock. They don’t have the resources to heal, and every moment they wait is a moment for Haggar to make her move. She almost certainly has already. Getting moving is the first priority, but Keith is a wreck. A half-day of napping isn’t enough to scratch the surface of what’s gone wrong. Shiro remembers shooting at him in the hangar bay, the chase after, the Black Lion tearing into the hull of a Galra cruiser—one of hundreds and how he avoided getting shot down right then and there is a mystery Shiro can’t contemplate.

Shiro remembers the fight, too. The fight, and what came after. The first time Shiro teleported in the Black Lion it pulled so much out of him he evaporated at the first backlash of quintessence and Keith is worse off by far.

He’s not the only one who can pilot the Black Lion, either. Shiro feels a foreign, knee-jerk urge to argue, to pull rank. The words are on the tip of his tongue, but it's not him. “You sure?” he asks instead.

Keith gives a curt nod and the Lion hums to life under his hands. Shiro feels its warmth and intent rise in him, too. They're still connected. Through it, he can feel Keith’s energy like a candle flickering. Krolia meets his eyes over Keith's head and Shiro knows the set of her mouth because he's seen it on Keith a hundred times—she wants to argue but won’t. She's worried. Shiro is worried, too.

The body he's in is strong at least, even if he isn't yet. He lays a hand on Keith's shoulder and tries to ground him through lift-off. The Lion stutters getting off the ground, touches back down once with enough force to make Shiro grunt and startle a pained sound out of Keith.

He's breathing hard, sweating visibly. The Black Lion takes the most out of its pilot. It always has. It took everything from Shiro. He tightens his grip on Keith and tries to imagine the Lion taking something from him, too, but the image flies out of his mind as soon as he conjures it.

“I've got this,” Keith growls at him and punches the thrusters to full with a yell Shiro remembers from their first sim flights together. The Lion breaks gravity, finally, and there’s nothing but the quiet of open space ahead of them and three days travel to the next outpost. Keith keys in the autopilot and then whips his head around to shoot a look at Shiro. “I didn’t need your help.”

The anger takes him aback. “Keith, you're—”

“No, this isn't about me. You were _dead_.” His voice cracks on the word. Shiro is peripherally aware of Krolia leaning against the wall, watching them. Keith shakes his head and closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, the anger is gone. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

He’s in pain. The fight is still coming back to Shiro in pieces, but he remembers teeth and eyes that glowed and the wonder is that he isn’t dead. Keith didn’t put a scratch on him except for the arm. Shiro doesn’t know how to thank him for that or if it’s something you thank someone for when they almost gave up their life to see it through. He slides his hand from Keith’s shoulder, drawing his fingers above his armor to the back of his neck,  unsure if the touch will be welcome.

Keith’s hair is damp with sweat from the effort. His head bows a fraction and he takes a breath that’s more a sigh. If there’s a perfect thing to say, some string of words that’ll put them right, Shiro doesn’t know them.

 _I’m proud of you_ sours in his throat before he can give it life. He’s said it before, he realizes, the wrong way at the wrong time. It’s too little too late anyway. He’s not proud—he’s grateful, in the most desperate way. He’ll spend the rest of his life grateful and more than. There’s no word for everything Keith has given him—and it is everything. There’s no part of Shiro left that wasn’t given.

They stay like that for minutes that stretch, the cockpit sitting in perfect silence despite the four of them, Keith’s quiet breathing the only marker. Shiro drags his thumb up and down, drawing little shapes against Keith’s skin and tries to think of what he has left to give in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/175310481415/im-a-sucker-for-hurtcomfort-and-angst-so-id)] [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1012024682684379136)]
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	4. shiro finds a way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4\. shiro finds a way
>
>> “Want a bath?” Keith asks, nodding at some hidden path through the trees.
>> 
>> Shiro follows without hesitating.

They find an outpost mid-way to where they’re trying to get to.

It’s a jungle moon, warm and damp, but it has water and food and they're operating on basics right now. They trade Castle salvage for enough currency to buy essentials at the little single-story shop and settle in for the night. Half the team wants to make it a stop-and-grab but Shiro still aches from the fight, body and soul, and Keith isn’t better. Keith is worse—and worse than he was after the fight. The burn is scabbing over, but it doesn’t make it look better.

When Coran starts to argue, Shiro frowns and tries to be subtle about glancing to the stone wall of the supply shop where Keith is leaned under the dripping eaves. He's already drifting off. Coran sees, his mouth snaps shut, and that’s that.

The trees are good cover, even for something as massive as the Lions. They make a disjointed camp and everyone busies themselves with little tasks. Lance tries to find something for the cow to eat, Allura and Coran sort their take from the Castle, Krolia and the wolf go to hunt, and Shiro watches it all. He’s standing at least but too exhausted to do more than that. Keith won’t sit down and as long as he's up, it doesn't seem right not to be. He disappears a few minutes in, but some part of Shiro can sense him nearby. It’s in his head, maybe, or the Black Lion has tied them in some way. Either way, he can't muster the energy to worry.

He almost doesn’t notice when Keith comes back.

He appears next to Shiro and taps him on the shoulder. “Want a bath?” he asks, nodding at some hidden path.

Shiro follows without hesitating.

The trees are still and quiet, the intermittent drip of water off leaves the only sound. Distant sunlight filters through the mist and canopy, but it's not enough to do more than dull the shadows. For a moment the darkness sends him back to that place and those months out of time. He puts a hand on Keith's back before he realizes what he's doing, but Keith only glances back and nods at him. They're both real here.

Keith leads them to half a clearing where there’s a clear pool of still water. It's the first time they've been alone in—a day, Shiro realizes. A day and months and two years. They strip off their armor in silence. Keith is the first done and Shiro lags to watch him walk into the water. It’s familiar and beautiful and strange, too, because he would know the way Keith walks and moves if he was blind, but Keith has changed in a hundred small ways.

The bruises over his back are lurid. There’s no way he doesn’t have a broken rib, at minimum. The armor goes far in a fight, but even in the clipped chaos of his memories he remembers a dozen moments when it might have happened. It's a wonder that's the worst he has to show.

When he gets to deep enough water Keith stops and spreads out his arms and falls backwards into the water with a little sigh. The splash is almost big enough to hit Shiro and he realizes he's been stalled staring after Keith.

Keith surfaces and rolls to look back at him. “Do you need help?” he asks, frowning. Shiro shakes his head and hopes the red on his cheeks isn't visible at a distance.

It’s hard working the armor off one-handed but not impossible. Shiro’s almost done with the leg pieces, which are arguably the hardest. He starts on the hard shell over his left thigh, trying to be graceful about it, trying to ignore the feeling of Keith’s eyes on him. That weight feels different now and he can’t tell why.

Unbidden, Keith rises out of the water and comes back to him. Shiro can’t let himself look but he can hear him dripping water as he pads over and kneels. Keith's long fingers find the catch for the chest piece and start on the one arm he has left. And yeah, maybe he needed help for that. Maybe he always will, now. It's not a sad thought.

He should feel like something broken, but he doesn’t. Sitting there with Keith’s hands on him, mist in the air settling over him like a second skin, he’s the happiest he remembers being. They’re at the edge of the universe, running on empty, and he’s happy. He rolls his head to watch Keith while he works.

They're both too tired to try and make conversation. Keith glances up at him once, smiling again despite the bags under his eyes. He's calmer. It's the quiet confidence he always dreamed for Keith and saw starting to sneak in around the edges, but now it's settled in him and Shiro doesn't know how to take it. Sometimes you aren't prepared to get the things you want most.

The belt is the last thing to come off. Keith makes him stand and lifts it away, leaving it in a pile with the rest before he returns. Shiro’s given up doing this on his own so he doesn’t argue when Keith reaches up to the back of his neck to undo the zipper on the flight suit, focusing on the faint bars of sun dappling off the cool blue of the water over Keith’s shoulder and the way the moss feels under his feet, even through the cloth covering them—anything but Keith’s hands on his bare skin.

Keith pulls his arm through and goes to his other shoulder and stops cold. He takes a breath, and then another and then pulls back and looks at Shiro with panic in his eyes.

His arm is a wreck. Shiro knew it with the same awareness of a wound he didn’t have time to examine; there’s nothing they could do about it so there was no need to worry about it. There’s nothing they can do now, either. He hasn’t looked at it yet but he can feel new edges of metal biting into his shoulder under the cloth. He can remember the pain of feeling it expand and then the triumphant realization of new power as he aimed it at Keith.

It’s not a good memory.

Keith hisses as he starts to pull back the cloth. “Shiro—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Keith traces his fingers around it, where metal meets skin and bone. There’s a question on his lips, but he closes his mouth without voicing it. The old him wouldn’t have held eye contact this long. Shiro feels himself start to heat at that gaze, at the way it settles a half inch higher than it used to, at the way his long hair plasters to his face and neck, dripping water. On an impulse, he reaches up and pushes it back over Keith’s forehead.

It makes him look older or like the gangster in some bad movie. It makes him look beautiful.

He was, anyway. Despite the scar—or because of it. They match now. It’s selfish to think so. He wants to touch it, but it’s still too new and the compulsion is an odd one. The desire isn't his, but it is, in the same way the memory of a dark room and Keith's promise to save him is, too. The thing that gave Keith that scar is still in him, in some small way. It always will be. It regrets it, but it lived for that fight.

He lets his hand fall to Keith’s cheek, just above the mark, tracing it with his eyes where his fingers can’t yet. It gets to him. All of his gets to him and Keith is better than an anchor and better than a rock. He’s given Shiro everything he is and still Shiro wants more.

Keith’s breaks his gaze and his touch moves from Shiro’s shoulder,, pulling the cloth over his wrecked skin with care, and down, off his chest. He gets as far as Shiro's waist and the vee of muscle over his hips before he stops and looks back up and there's the Keith he remembers, burning red across his cheeks.

Shiro’s hand is still on his face and in his hair. He doesn't want to lose that contact. It's essential.

With a bare resignation he comes to terms with it: there’s nothing he wants more. The universe could give him everything and without this, it would be nothing—but asking more of Keith is beyond his ability. He drags his thumb over the shadow below Keith's eye and threads his fingers into Keith's hair. It's a gesture unmistakable in its intimacy. It's an offer.

He can't take more from Keith, but he can give something, if Keith will have it.

Keith's gaze goes wide, surprised, a little unsure. He raises a hand to Shiro’s like he needs to touch it to know it’s real. Shiro watches him think it through, emotion playing across his face, one after the other—the same ones Shiro knows by heart now because he’s been through all of them and decided it wasn't worth the risk.

He sees Keith make his decision, but instead of turning away, he steps forward and leans up and—of course. Of course, Keith would be the first to make this move. The kiss is soft and sweet and slow. Shiro deepens it half by accident before Keith pulls back, eyes still closed, mouth still parted.

Shiro’s stomach drops out. It takes a moment to recognize the emotion coursing through him and when he does he wants to laugh. It's relief. His head falls forward, knocking against Keith's with more force than he means it to, and then he laughs. He’s _relieved._

Keith pulls back far enough to look at him, stuck between offended and shocked. “What?”

Shiro presses another kiss to the corner of his mouth, clumsy with joy, and then to his forehead, because he can. The relief is that it's easy. The relief is that it changes nothing. The relief is that they can have this one good thing for free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/175355540300/if-youre-still-taking-requests-sk-alone-for)] [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1012493408613511168)]
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! I'm about 50% done with these post season six prompts so feel free to request if there's something special you'd like to see!


	5. keith sees shiro three times in the abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5\. keith sees shiro three times in the abyss
>
>> “He's got your hair,” Shiro whispers. 
>> 
>> Keith watches himself resettle the child nervously, like he still isn’t sure how to hold it. He watches himself smile. “Hey, don’t blame me for all that,” he hears himself say. “I’ve seen what you look like in the morning.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Julia who is truly one of the kindest and most talented people I know!! Thank you so much for everything you do. Every time I have the chance to talk to you is a joy and your stuff makes so many people so, so happy. I hope you enjoy this and you deserve so much more.
> 
> [[this is based on this edit of hers](http://tonystarkfucksaround.tumblr.com/post/175384221714/so-do-you-ever-wonder-if-there-were-other)]

Keith sees Shiro three times in the abyss.

The first vision is violent and raw and it leaves him ruined in a way he isn't sure he knows how to face, like the anticipation of loss before the final blow, sure and terrible. It’s only a flash of chaos. He can hear his own voice, pleading and fast. They’re somewhere dark, lit only by tanks with that raw, dark quintessence glow he’s come to dread. Shiro’s voice makes it sound like he tried to swallow glass and his words echo in Keith's mind later:

_We're not going anywhere._

He can’t stop thinking about it. Even after they reach the whale and safety and find camp for the night, the weight of it dragging him down until he’s too tired to sleep.

“Do you think everything we see here is real?” he asks Krolia in the quiet.

She chews and swallows and eyes him. “Yes.”

She's never lied to him. He appreciates it, appreciates that she's straight-forward and terse the way he is, appreciates more that she's honest, even when she knows the answer will hurt.

“I love you,” she says when Keith doesn’t reply, “and nothing will change that.” _I'll never leave you again,_ she said. He wants to believe her. He wants to believe he won’t drive her away or mess this up. He wants to believe he won’t disappoint her.

A phantom pain burns over his cheek for days and weeks later. Sometimes he wakes up, face pressed against the wolf’s soft fur, jaw stinging, body numb. Over and over, he turns the memory in his mind and tries to understand how they could break so hard so fast. He doesn't know how to be brave through the thought of what's coming. Shiro is an ache in his mind, a sore spot he doesn’t know how not to worry. He took it too far. A stolen car, two fights, a dozen little arguments he overheard in halls. Shiro got him into the Garrison and kept him there on will and a faith that Keith could never share. He wore out Shiro’s patience. He pushed too far, finally. He lost that abiding faith.

It sticks with him. Krolia teaches him to hunt and their first full meal is a feast. They stuff themselves and lie by the fire and loneliness leaves him without a parting word. He finds the wolf and the darkness abates a little further. They build a home, and the memory shifts and changes and one day he realizes it doesn’t have the capacity to freeze him anymore.

He wakes up with his jaw aching and thinks: I’ll survive that, too. And so will he.

 

* * *

 

He gets older. He grows. The suit starts fitting poorly and Krolia has to help him adjust it. She cuts seams and re-glues them together and Keith wonders if she learned it from Dad or taught him how because the image of her hunched over his suit rings back to a dozen good memories of his Dad trying to fix his clothes so they didn’t hang off his small frame like a sack.

 _You’re not small,_ he’d laugh when Keith groused about it. _You’re compact. Hell, I wish I could say the same._ He’d say and joke about the imaginary bald spot he was going to get from hitting door frames. His stitching was always a little off, but later, when it was all Keith had to remember him by, he’d treasured those mismatched seams.  

It doesn’t hurt anymore. Krolia asks about his Dad and the hitch in his throat when he tries to tell her wears off a few months in.

“Can you salvage it?”

Krolia looks up, smiles. “The suits are made to fit any size, but this one is different. Kolivan must have commissioned it for you, specifically. But yes.” She runs her hands over it and flips it over, eyeing it critically before she hands it back. “I need more supplies, but we’ll make do with that for now.”

Keith takes it back, but loses a moment staring at her hands, mind glancing over the new memory in his mind of those hands in his hair as a baby. They’ve seen a few dozen of each others memories. Most are mundane and small and those are Keith’s favorite. His parents in the kitchen, trying to decide what to eat for dinner. The days after he was born when they worried about how big he was and what he would eat and a hundred little anxieties. The two of them in the desert at sunset, quiet and content—a memory his heart jumps on and tears apart like the wolf with a bone because for a moment he imagines Shiro and him in the same position, hoverbikes at their backs, and aches again.

The second vision of Shiro comes so quietly and so long after the first, he thinks it’s a dream for months after.

It steals over him that night as he’s dozing in and out, the wolf by his side a barrier against the cold. Dreams are rare; dreams about Shiro non-existent. It’s a comfort. If he dreamed of Shiro, it would be that moment in the dark and fury surrounded by specters, confronting a man who seemed almost a stranger. Day dreams are different and full of hundred little regrets and wants he wouldn't know how to give breath to if his life depended on it, but true dreams—never.

At the edge of sleep, he feels the light cast across closed eyes like a soft breath.

The scene is strange and warm. Olkarion he recognizes by its orange haze and bronze buildings, but the last time he was there has the memory of it tainted and acrid. The perpetual sunset-sky reminds him of loss. It reminds him of disappointment, and worse—the keen sting of being one to his friends and to someone he loved.

He can see the team, lined up and limned in the same light they were the last time he saw them, but they're not angry this time. The smiles on their faces make his lips tug upward, but then his eyes settle on what they're watching and his heart stills in his chest.

It feels like his mind is on a satellite delay. He almost doesn't recognize himself; he doesn't have occasion to look in a mirror much and he hasn't worn that armor in months past a year, but it is him. Impossibly, it’s him, and his arms are wrapped around someone—again, his mind stutters on the realization.

It's not Shiro. It can’t be, with that hair. But it is.

Before he has time to come to terms, he watches himself lean up. Shiro meets him. The kiss looks familiar and soft, but his mind bends around _kiss_ and can't move past that. Peripherally he realizes the team isn't alone; there are others there, a disorganized crowd dressed in bright colors. This is a celebration. This is an event. This is a—

No. He cuts the thought off cold, makes himself breathe, and tamps down the angry heat rising in his chest as he makes himself look back at the couple.

They part, but only in the smallest sense. They're still pressed together chest to hip, tucked tight despite the bulk of their armor between them. They're still looking at each other, as if they can’t look elsewhere. A cold thing writhes in his stomach and it's so new he doesn't know what to call it until the dream is falling away from him and it rises again, fiercer

It's want, without hope. It’s jealousy. It’s disdain that he could dream something so beautiful and so false. In the morning, he wakes with the taste of it still on his tongue and leaves without a word.

Krolia lets him go, but he feels her eyes on his back until he’s well out of sight.

 

* * *

 

The third time is the hardest. The third time is the best, and the worst. He comes out of it like he’s rising out of water after drowning, all the breath pulled out of his lungs and his heart beating in his ears and throat.

He’s out in the forest when the light crests the edge of their strange planet. It consumes him before he can flinch. When it clears, it's a memory he's already visited: the house he grew up in, intact, and his parents outside.

It's the same scene, but the details are off, he notices piece by piece. The house is new and his Dad never dressed in Garrison grays. His Mom never wore that jacket. Keith knows because he picked it out himself a few weeks before Kerberos launched and he endured a week of quiet amusement from Shiro for it. It's not his parents.

It's Shiro and him, and the bundle in Keith's arms swaddled in purple is a child. It's a baby. His mind tries to shape around it and fails.

Keith doesn't look older. Shiro does, but only because of the hair and the realization Keith’s seen it that color before is a double blow. His eyes still have the same laugh lines at the corners, not deeper but getting there. Keith watches himself turn his head to look up at Shiro and there’s the scar, wide and horrid across his face. No single piece of it makes sense, but together—

It's someone else's child. It’s Lance's or Hunk’s, maybe, foisted off on Keith for the weekend. He'd call Shiro for moral support in any universe. They're back on Earth and relegated to babysitters. The concept is so ridiculous it makes joy kick up in his stomach, a humor so full  it almost makes him nauseous. The white hair wasn't a dream and the old ache in his jaw is spiking, but they’ve made it and they’re babysitters. Of course that’s where it would go. Something simple, something silly.

“He's got your hair,” Shiro whispers.

His stomach drops out and the blood leaves his face so fast it hurts. Keith watches himself resettle the child nervously, like he still isn't sure how to hold it. He watches himself smile. “Hey, don't blame me for all that,” he hears himself say. “I've seen what you look like in the morning.”

He's teasing. This is a joke between them. This Keith knows what Shiro looks like fresh out of bed. This baby has his hair. This baby has Shiro’s hair.

“An angel?” Shiro asks, mock-innocent, white hair catching the sun like a halo. Something fond and silly wends its way through him at the sight. “I think those are the words you used—”

Keith bumps him with an elbow, not hard enough to disturb the baby in his arms. “I was delirious,” he mutters. The look on his face is suddenly unrecognizable. It's self-assured and quiet and the set of his lips is more than half a smile. It's the look of someone who knows what they want and wants what they have. He sees himself look up at Shiro, open his mouth to say something else, but the words are obscured, the light starting to brighten again.

The last thing he can make out is Shiro leaning in, knocking their heads together in some practiced gesture of affection. It's too soon. It's too soon and he didn't get to see how many medals Shiro had on his jacket or whether the scar stretched down his own neck or whose hair the child had—black like his or the soft, deep brown Keith hasn’t forgotten in two years. That's the detail his mind clings to, tooth and claw.

_He’s got your hair._

After it passes, he can't move. Everything is visceral: the cold dirt and loam under his hands, fingers digging into it, sticks poking where the cloth has started to get thin from a year and a half of wear. The numbness in his legs, the heat in his cheeks, the too-long hair falling in his eyes. He closes them and tries to commit it to memory, looking for any clue, any path from here to there because he's had three dreams and one was a tragedy.

It's well after dark by the time he gets back to camp. The wolf nibbles on his fingers the whole way there, bouncing through space, appearing ahead of him and next to him, trying to get his attention. He can barely see where he’s walking.

Krolia is waiting for him, face unreadable. He can't face her.

“Keith?” she asks quietly. They don't usually talk about it, but this time is different.

He rolls words, tests them, tries them on his tongue. “Did you see?” he asks, voice almost inaudible.

Her eyes are wide. After so long, he knows what that expression means. Neither of them are perfect with words and she doesn’t know what to say. She nods, instead.

Keith's too far gone. He shakes his head, but can't say anything else. The wolf butts his head against Keith's thigh with a little whine and Keith focuses on the hiss and pop of the fire under the dinner he’s late for. His face burns and his jaw aches with a scar he doesn't have and his arms feel empty in a way he never thought the would.

“You looked happy,” Krolia murmurs and stops. He sees her weigh her next words. It's a skill he wishes he could learn faster. “So did Shiro.”

His eyes are stinging with the smoke. He can’t look at it and he can’t look at her. “Shiro,” he says and stumbles and tries again. “We're not—he and I aren't like that.” It's not something he needs to make an excuse for he realizes once he's said it. Making an excuse says too much.

Krolia moves to him and kneels. “You can be whatever you want to be. Things change. It's not always bad.” Keith knows he looks panicked out of reason over one half-explained future memory that might never come to pass. He doesn't want to be this person in front of her, but it's too late to be anything else. “When I crashed, I thought my life was over. I thought I'd failed my mission.” She reaches out to him, hand on his arm, right at the crook of his elbow where the armor stops. “But Keith. I found something better.”

It's a rare show of words and as she says it, it falls together in his mind. He isn't scared. The fight, the kiss, the child—he isn't scared it will happen. He's scared it won't. He’s scared that all he'll get of that life are these memories, half-tasted.

Her thumb moves over his skin, back and forth, comforting.

“You know, you looked like me,” she murmurs after a long moment. “Right from the start, you looked like me. But you still have his eyes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all: but where did the baby come from
> 
> me: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> [[on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/176202950560/keith-sees-shiro-three-times-in-the-abyss-25k)] [[on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1021478771365359616)]


End file.
